Five Years Time
by elimaru
Summary: "In five years time, we might not get along; in five years time, you might just prove me wrong." Post-season 1, pre-season 2. Mostly fluff. A look at how much things can change  and not change  in 5 years.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing! _Glee_, all its characters and whatnot belong to FOX and Ryan Murphy.

**A/N:** I'm going to be starting on a new, multi-chapter story here soon, and I feel like this and _Sins of My Youth_ are the only 2 of my old stories that I felt were good enough to post here. Plus I wanted to upload these 2 because Finchel is and always will be my OTP and I am in NO WAY over this breakup junk. Keep the faith alive!  
Anyways, here's story #2! Please enjoy, and once again reviews are more than welcome.

Inspired by "5 Years Time" by Noah and the Whale. AKA the cutest song ever. :)

* * *

"Hi, Mr. Berry." Quinn smiles blithely at the geeky-looking, Jewish-nosed man looking down at her from inside the open doorway. Batting her eyes a little and smiling her slightly crooked, gap-toothed smile (stupid tooth fairy—just wait until daddy finally pays for braces in a few years), "Is Rachel home?"

Mr. Berry blinks down at the ten-year-old, a bit surprised; he hadn't thought Rachel and Quinn had any desire to be in the same room. Whenever they've gone to town councils, there's always been a stony silence that settles between the Fabray family and his own (but then again, that doesn't surprise him, seeing as they're so…_Christian_—they look at him and Isaac like they're the worst of scandals).

"May I ask why?" he responds.

Quinn jabs one tiny thumb over her lightly tanned shoulder, and he sees the faces of Noah Puckerman, Santana Lopez, and that funny little blonde girl who he always sees trying to talk to her cat; the three are seldom mentioned in the Berry household, but have been brought up on occasion (and that's usually followed by a sudden change in subject as Rachel begins to rattle on about something completely irrelevant).

Quinn answers, still smiling sincerely, "A few of us were going down to the pool and wanted to know if she might want to come along. It would only be for a few hours."

"Um. Yes, she's home. Just a moment." He steps back inside and shuts the door, and Quinn smirks victoriously over her shoulder at Puck, Santana, and Brittany. They grin, and Puck begins to pedal his dirt bike in circles around Brittany and Santana, who giggle and try to jab at the spokes on his wheels with the whitewashed ones attached to their matching pink bicycles.

"Don't hit my bike!" Quinn screeches from the porch, and Puck laughs obnoxiously as he swerves and narrowly misses the magenta bike lying in the grass of the front yard. "Besides," Quinn continues, lowering her voice just enough so that they can hear it without it traveling inside, "You've got the amo."

Puck grins and pats the lidded tops of four Styrofoam cups, filled to the brim with blue slush, nestled in the wire basket attached to his handlebars.

"_Trust _me," he responds, rolling his eyes and shrugging. "I'd never damage precious cargo."

"Here she comes," Santana hisses, and Quinn whips her head around in time to see Rachel emerge from the door, a pink one-piece swimsuit peeking out from the collar of a white T-shirt with an abstract ballerina and the words "Tiny Dancer" printed artistically across the front.

"Hi, guys," she squeaks, and follows Quinn down the steps, parting ways only to run around to the side of the house and retrieve her purple bike—thank goodness she decided on her birthday to finally take the training wheels off, now that she _is_ ten years old after all, and before anyone saw them.

"Hi, Rachel," the four all say methodically, and begin pedaling away as she reaches the sidewalk. She hesitates, and then sighs and pulls herself onto her seat and then pushes off, quickly catching up to them. To her surprise, Santana and Brittany shift over and let her come up beside them, putting her between Santana and the grass. Riding in silence for two blocks, Rachel feels her stomach squirm at the awkwardness of the situation. She watches, after a while, as Quinn and Puck—ahead of her, Santana, and Brittany—exchange glances. Puck shrugs and gives Quinn a "whatever" look. When she glances over at Santana and Brittany, she sees that they're watching Quinn and Puck intently.

"So, Rachel," Quinn calls over her shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"Aren't you _so glad_ that we're finally done with fourth grade?"

"Um. I guess. Why?"

"Well, I mean, you _have_ to be tired of getting treated like a baby, right? Like, they acted like we were just _such_ little kids—like we can't take care of ourselves. They didn't think we were any kind of mature. It was so stupid and humiliating! Like, _seriously_."

"Yeah," Rachel answers, "seriously."

"And, you know, what was _really_ stupid was all those babyish field trips they took us on. I mean, seriously," Quinn scoffs, "did they _really_ think we thought those kiddie games at the museums were _fun_?"

"Yeah, really."

"Especially the trip to the aquarium at the end of the year," Quinn says sharply, and Rachel sees Puck's mouth begin to curl into a wicked grin. Her face flushes.

"Yeah," she says meekly, "that was a really bad one."

Actually, "bad" is an understatement. It had been miserable. For Rachel, at least. Especially the part where she spent all her lunch money on an extra-large soda slush at the gas station on the way there, and then at the exhibit slipped on the tiled floor of the jungle exhibit—wet and slick from the artificial humidity—which sent her careening to the floor and her extra-large slush through the air, dumping the two-thirds of drink still in the cup all over the pretty white sundress Quinn Fabray had bought just for the last trip of the year.

"It _was_ awful," Santana snickers.

"…I'm sorry," Rachel mumbles, and the heat in her face spreads down her neck.

"It's okay," Quinn sighs, and Puck bites down on his lip and squints straight ahead at the approaching street corner. "I'm over it."

"You are?" Rachel asks feebly.

No sooner has she said this than Santana's elbow is ramming into Rachel's ribcage. With a swift "_oof_" Rachel lets go of her own bike, and in a flash her bike is zigzagging and throwing her to the ground, sending her skidding along the edge of the sidewalk before finally rolling into the grass. Soft, embarrassing sobs bubble up in immediate response to the pain that ensues in her elbows and along her right knee; the sound of her crying is mixed with the sounds of snickering, screeching brakes against tires, rubber against pavement, and scraping Styrofoam.

Puck sneers, "Need a drink?"

Before she can respond, a cold wave of blue slush slaps her in the face, followed by another hitting her shoulder, then her chest, and then the back of her head as she cowers away. Staring down at her ruined T-shirt covered in dirt, slush and a tinge of blood, she bites her lower lip vigorously and swallows hard. She shakes her head quickly and lets her slush-matted hair fall in front of her face so they won't see her cry.

"_Now _I'm over it. See you when school starts," Quinn snips over her shoulder, and Rachel hears Santana and Brittany scream with laugher as a light wave of dirt showers over top of her, accompanied by the sound of bike tires skidding over the grass as Puck pedals away from her again and then moves up the street with the three girls.

Rachel pulls herself up and sits there, still whimpering in pain, until she can lean against the fire hydrant positioned at the corner of the sidewalk. She watches as Puck, Quinn, Santana and Brittany slow again in front of a house on the corner of the street opposite her, and then she quickly ducks her head and takes to cradling her skinned, bleeding elbows and trying to clean the blood off her knee (it only smudges it everywhere and makes the scrape hurt even worse). A taller boy with brown hair, whom she recognizes as Finn Hudson from school, zips out on his bike from the back yard of the house they've stopped at, braking as he reaches the four waiting for him on the sidewalk. Rachel can't help but watch out of the corner of her eye as they talk animatedly to him. She feels fresh tears well in her eyes when they begin to point in her direction, and her face flames again when Finn follows their gestures with his eyes.

Down the street, Finn Hudson laughs weakly at his friends, while inside he feels a pang of sympathy for the tiny girl curled up at the other end of the street, covered in slushie. While his friends go on and on about how hilarious Rachel Berry looks right now, he bites his lip and chews thoughtfully, barely noticing their jokes. He's seen her before, at school every day, but he's never actually known anything about her other than the fact that she's stuck in Lima just like everyone else, and that "she has two gay dads, isn't that the freakiest thing?" (Quinn's words, not his). He always felt a little envious that she had two dads and he didn't even have one. When he was four he'd wanted to ask her if he could borrow one of hers sometime, but when he'd told his mom his plan, she'd said no and then retreated to her room for the rest of the day. He wasn't sure what bothered him more—the fact that he felt like his mom was mad at him or the fact that he didn't know how else to talk to that girl down the street whom he still sometimes wonders about.

"Anyway, dude," Puck says and begins to push off on his bike, "let's hit up the pool."

"Yeah, Finn," Quinn chimes in, smirking. "Let's go."

Finn glances over his shoulder at Rachel Berry, still huddled in the grass and nursing her wounds, as he pushes off and starts pedaling.

"I can't believe she actually bought it!" Santana says and cackles two streets later, while Puck, Brittany and Quinn laugh along with her. "For as much of a know-it-all as she is, she's so _stupid_!"

Finn bites his lower lip.

"I know," Quinn snickers. "But she should be thanking us. Now she'll never be able to wear that shirt again."

"Seriously!" Puck answers. "That's got to be the most _faggy_ shirt I've ever seen."

"Well, she _is_ the biggest _fag_ in school," Santana sneers.

Finn bites his lower lip harder.

"There's a reason some people have no friends," Quinn scoffs.

Finn slams on the brakes of his bike and screeches to a halt. Puck, Quinn, Santana and Brittany all slow and come to a stop, and then look over their shoulders at him, throwing him curious looks.

"What's wrong?" Santana asks snippily. "Forgot to let mommy drown you in sunscreen?"

"No. I just…um." Finn rubs the back of his neck, thinking on the spot (something he's never been too good at). "I promised my mom I would clean my room before I left for the pool."

"Aw, who gives a crap," Puck says and swats at the air. "Your mom's not even gonna be home until ten tonight!"

"Actually," Finn blurts, "she's getting off early. She's gonna get mad at me if I don't do it." He shrugs and then turns his bike around.

"Who cares, Finn?" Quinn snaps. "Just tell her you forgot, it's no big deal."

"No, really," Finn says. "It won't take that long. Just go on, I'll be there in a little while."

"Whatever," Quinn hisses, and then with a roll of their eyes, the four of them face forward and continue on.

Finn pedals in the opposite direction, flying backwards along the path they've just taken. He skids around the corner by his house, and to his relief Rachel is still there, on the ground and trying to brush the dirt off of her scrapes while wiping at her eyes with the clean backs of her hands. She looks up warily when she hears him approach, his bike skidding over the paved sidewalk as he brakes and comes to a stop. He stands there for a minute after easing off of his seat and flipping the kickstand out, watching her watch him uncertainly.

"Hey, Rachel," he finally says quietly, coming closer. Both of them are a little caught off guard when he says her name—they've never spoke until today, and everything is new, unfamiliar, even a little startling. She stares at him like deer in headlights, watching him approach.

"What do you want?" she mumbles after a moment, and then sniffs and wipes her eyes again.

"Are you okay?" He drops down on his haunches once he reaches the grass beside her. "It…looks like you took a nasty spill." He can't help it when his eyes travel to her sticky, sugary-smelling hair.

"Yeah. I fell," she lies, her voice soft.

"…Into a slushie puddle?" he responds, flashing her a small smile. He feels pleased when he hears her laugh weakly—she's not in hysterics, but it's a giggle and it's _there_.

"No," she admits, and then falls silent when he gently takes her slender left arm in his hand and inspects her elbow, and then her right one. After his eyes finally rest on her knee—badly scraped, but not deep—he looks back to her eyes (still red and puffy, but he also notices that they're this really pretty, dark brown color).

"You need a Band-Aid," he finally says. _Like she didn't know that_, he thinks, kicking himself mentally.

She nods faintly at him. Standing, Finn extends his hand toward her. Rachel stares at it like she's not sure what to make of it, still just sitting there.

"Come on," he says gently. "I've got some at my house."

"Oh, I…I mean, I don't want to be a bother…"

"You're not." He smiles softly at her again. "I promise." She doesn't move. After another moment, he leans over a bit, his hand hovering closer to her.

"Just trust me," he says gently.

She blinks, her face turning slightly pink, and then she finally smiles faintly and reaches up, letting him wrap his fingers around hers and pull her to her feet.

"Thank you, Finn," she murmurs, and takes the handlebars of her bike from him as he hoists it off of the ground, too. The same feeling returns as when he'd first said her name—the unfamiliarity of it all makes it somehow strange and yet appealing at the same time.

They walk to his house without speaking again, until he has to coax her inside.

"It's no problem, really. Just come in." She climbs the porch stairs and enters his house tentatively, everything all new and foreign—being inside a boy's house.

He guides her upstairs, finds a washcloth and hand towel, and then sits on the lid of the toilet; she perches herself on the edge of the tub inside his bathroom and runs water over her knee and elbows, and then gets the washcloth wet and soapy and gently starts to scrub at her scrapes.

"Thank you," she repeats, just as quietly as before, and smiles at him, gazing out from under her eyelashes. After a moment longer, she moves and kneels on the floor outside the tub, leaning forward and letting the water run over her sticky hair.

As she glances at him again out of the corner of her eye, he notices that her lashes are really long and pretty, just like her hair is, and her skin is a really pretty tan, and she looks kind of cute when her cheeks are pink like that—

"All clean," she announces quietly.

He helps her stand, pulling her up by the hand (even though she really doesn't need his assistance and he knows it) and then waits outside in the hall while she dries her limbs off and then squeezes her hair with the towel. Once they're back downstairs, he feels the need to offer her a drink, and she smiles and accepts the glass of limeade he pours her.

"My mom makes it all summer."

She smiles at him over the rim of her glass as she takes a first sip, sitting with her legs crossed at the kitchen table, and he sits across from her.

"It's really good," she says.

"You've got some…" he trails off and awkwardly touches the corner of his mouth. Blinking, she daintily reaches up and wipes a trail around the edge of her mouth with her tiny hand. Finn finds his eyes following her fingertips around the contour of her lips.

"Um," he says after a long silence when she finishes the limeade off.

"Thanks for your help, Finn," she says, standing before he can say anything else. "I should be heading back home, though."

"Oh, okay. Yeah."

He stands and walks to the door with her, down the porch stairs and through the yard as they push their bikes. He gazes at her again once they've both seated themselves on their bikes.

"See you around?" he says, breaking the silence, and she looks up at him through those beautifully long lashes again.

After a moment, she smiles at him faintly with what looks to him like sadness (which confuses him), and then murmurs simply, "Sure."

They push off and then turn away from each other, but Finn stops again at the corner a few feet away from where he started, turning to look over his shoulder, watching Rachel Berry pedal down the sidewalk, around the corner, and then out of sight, damp hair streaming behind her. He frowns to himself, and then pushes off again, turning and gliding down the street.

For a moment he wonders if he should go the other way, with her, but then he sees the pool entrance ahead and remembers that the others are waiting for him.

* * *

"Finn!" Rachel hollers as he speeds up, zipping past the front building of the pool, weaving on his bike in between the few people coming up the sidewalk toward the large, white-washed entrance gate. Rachel grunts a little and pedals harder, trying to catch up with him while apologizing to the people they whiz past haphazardly. "Finn, I thought you said we were going to the pool!"

"Well," he calls over his shoulder and then brakes to a stop, "I had a change of plans."

He hears her huff in bewildered frustration as she slows, finally stopping just a few feet ahead of him. She turns to face him and scowls slightly, the pink in her cheeks tinting her features nicely. She crosses her arms over her bikini-clad chest—a halter, white with baby pink polka dots; standing from her bike and swinging the kickstand out, she plants herself firmly in front of his bike, reaches forward, and whacks him once on his shirtless chest for good measure.

"Ow!" he yelps playfully and smirks at her.

"What is the new plan, then?" she asks, staring expectantly at him.

He shrugs, smiles shyly, and reaches out to place his hands on her hips, looping his fingers through the belt loops of the jean shorts covering her swimsuit bottom. "I figured we'd go someplace…quieter."

She raises one eyebrow skeptically, though he sees a small smile fighting with the corners of her mouth.

"And where would that be, sir? I _do_ have other things to do later today: summer reading never takes care of itself and Mr. Schuester wants to start looking for duets we could sing at the fall concert…"

Squinting against the sun as he looks up at her from his seated position, he pats the top of his handlebars. She trails off and stares at him questioningly.

"Just trust me," he says and grins at her. She watches him for a moment more, and then rolls her eyes as her arms drop to her sides. She climbs carefully onto the bike and shifts herself until she sits balanced in the middle of the handlebars, hooking her feet on the metal rods protruding from the front wheels of the bike ("They're there for people to do tricks with the bike," he'd had to explain to her, "but I only tried once and dislocated my shoulder so I don't use them anymore…").

"All set?" he asks, and she smiles down at him over her shoulder and nods. He carefully pushes off and starts pedaling, taking them down the street, around the corner, and through the well-worn route he's traveled over his years in this neighborhood.

He smiles as they ride on, enjoying the occasional brush of her hair against his face in the wind, thinking about how glad he is that they can finally do all this stuff. They can go places together without worrying about what might or might not happen; they can choose to not care about people like Quinn Fabray and Jesse St. Jackass (_bastard_); they can do boyfriend-and-girlfriend stuff like hug and hold hands and kiss (that's one of his favorites) just because they feel like it. It's only been three weeks since she kissed him right there in the stairwell at school, and he's already fairly certain that he never wants to kiss anyone else again.

He returns his attention to the road as they enter the park.

"Hang on tight," he says over the air rushing past them, and once he's sure that she's got a firm grip on the bars he carefully veers off of the sidewalk and into the grass, both him and Rachel bracing themselves on the bike as they hit the suddenly-bumpy terrain.

"Where are we going?" she asks over her shoulder.

"You'll see."

"Tell me."

"You'll see!"

"_Finn Hudson!_"

He laughs out loud, and just shakes his head as he steers through the grass onto a thin dirt path. Trees, bushes, grass and moss suddenly surround them as they enter the secluded running trails behind the main park.

"Finn," she says seriously, "I demand to know where you're taking me."

"Nope."

She groans impatiently. "Please?"

He chuckles and then turns one final time, taking them onto a winding downhill pathway.

"You know," she says, squinting over her shoulder, "for a good boyfriend, you're not very straightforward or honest sometimes."

"Well, now I don't have to be," he says and grins mischievously, nodding and glancing ahead of them.

She turns her head and then doesn't say anything else as he stops in the middle of the path. A small wooden bridge makes a detour from the running path to an open, empty field; there's a tiny stream flowing under the bridge, and it leads to a slowly trickling waterfall that runs over a short, natural wall of stone. Blinking and smiling faintly, she slides off of the handlebars and carefully steps onto the bridge, staring around in silence for what feels like a good five minutes.

"I found it while I was jogging the other day," he says. "And I was thinking later in my run how sometimes couples have—you know—like, 'their spot' or something, and I was thinking that maybe this could be _our_ spot, because I feel like we could use one sometimes…"

She turns and stares up at him, her smile warm and precious, and nods slowly. She reaches out and grabs his hand, pulling him with her as she walks along the edge of the stream and then carefully takes a first step onto the top stone of the waterfall. He holds her from behind by both hands to balance her, and they're quickly reduced to soft, steady laughter as they slip their way down the slope and begin wading up the creek, water rising to their knees. Finally they find a larger patch of grass on the bank and climb back up; Rachel lays on her back, and Finn props himself up on one elbow, looking down at her.

It's moments like this when he _really_ realizes how much everyone else is missing when they look at her: the quick, uninterested glances that he sees way too many people give her in the halls at school. They don't get to see her laying there looking absolutely beautiful—smiling serenely with her teeth gently hugging her lower lip, eyelids lazily fluttering as she gazes at him, her face slightly pink from the sun, her hair splayed out in the grass behind her head. They don't get to feel her gently brush her fingertips across his cheek, down to his jaw, along his neck, sending shivers over his skin; or feel the way her hand comes to rest in the nook between his neck and collarbone, the soft, warm skin of her palm melting into him.

"I love you," he murmurs after a long moment of silence, and he reaches down and brushes a few stray bangs out of her sweet, chocolate brown eyes with their long lashes. Her hand returns to his face, her fingertips tracing the edge of his lips as her smile steadily glows.

"I love you too."

He relaxes the arm holding him up and lets himself hover mere centimeters from her—lets her hand trail from his chin to his chest to his abdomen, making his stomach somersault while her arm wraps around his waist—lets his lips find their spot against hers, fitting and folding into each other perfectly, like there's no other place they'd rather be.

Though he doesn't tell her, he still thinks a lot about that day during the summer before fifth grade when he watched her ride away, and how he wonders if things would have been different if he'd followed her instead of going his own way to the pool. At the same time, for some reason, he doubts they'd be quite like they are now if he had. But it's times like these that make him appreciate the way things have turned out—bike wrecks, ruined indoor picnics, bitter rejections, Jess St. James (_bastard_), and all.

Because even though it took five years, he finally decided to turn back around.

* * *

**THE END.**


End file.
